Even though much of its text may be preoccupied with "realistic" visuals, Nikolai Gogol's "Poem of Russia," Dead Souls is still full of extra-narrative comments and digressions, in keeping with Gogol's established style and his stated intentions for the novel as a morally uplifting work. In the main plot, this manifests itself mainly in short satirical asides and uncontrollable comparisons (up to a few paragraphs) conveyed by the author/narrator of Chichikov's journey. In later sections of the novel, however, the non-diegetic language expands to include entire passages in alternate voices or stylistic registers. As rhapsodic as they may seem, these off-plot points share a set of narrative strategies that build on the author's direct addresses in the final chapters. When Gogol stops speaking for Chichikov and lets the characters speak for themselves, or lets himself speak for the reader, he prepares his audience for his final conclusions about the relationships between each speaker. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The turning point for extra-narrative concerns supplanting questions of plot is the shift in narrative focus of Chichikov's projects toward the townspeople and their gossip. The first such scene is "a certain conversation which took place between certain two ladies" in chapter nine (174). As in Chichikov's introduction in the first chapter, the names of the characters are only revealed when they enter a diegetic perspective. They are first "heard" in the dialogue, while Chichikov's name and rank are only known to the reader when they can be "seen" in writing (178, 4). However, more pronounced in this final section is the narrator's reason for distancing himself from his subjects. He begins this section by acknowledging that "it is very difficult for the author to name the two ladies in such a way as not to make them angry with him, as they once were" (175). Here, the false skaz verisimilitude that has inflected the narrative of the plot from time to time is taken up a notch to suggest that elements of this anecdote could be interpreted as non-fictional. Echoing the opening of "The Overcoat," the author's narrator hyperbolically explains that he wishes to avoid inadvertently defaming anyone with the same names as his fictional characters (175-6). Ironically, the author's wishes are not honored by his own pen: the characters do not remain anonymous. But it is not the narrator's voice that names them, it is theirs. Gogol thus creates a crucial distinction between the concerns of his narrator and those of his characters. Before this chapter, Chichikov being both subject and object of the narration, these were one and the same. The distinction may therefore seem somewhat arbitrary, but its importance becomes evident as the novel's thematic scope expands beyond its linear plot. Having control of their own fictional identity gives these characters a kind of "ridiculous agency" that becomes the hallmark of extra-narrative speakers in Dead Souls. Qualities of self-determination, expressed through relative freedom from narrative control, diminish rather than elevate the moral standing of these characters. In this first example, the narrow focus of plot-driven storytelling gives way to a deeper insight into very superficial people. . The elaborate dialogue between the ladies begins with a long disagreement over clothing, progresses togossip about Chichikov's intrigues and includes a particularly controversial argument over the face of a third woman (177-8, 180-4, 182). Throughout, the ladies' wickedness is exposed in their own voices. What begins as a simple disagreement over complexion ends with venom as exaggerated as "I am ready, here and now, to lose my children, my husband, all our possessions, if she has even a small drop, even if only a small particle. , even a shade of red on his cheeks! (182). An earlier argument ended with one of the ladies reasoning, with false high-society politeness: “It seems like you really want to insult me. . . Obviously you are already tired of me, obviously you want to break off all your friendship with me” (178). It is important to note that this obviously ridiculous form of speech is directly quoted, without paraphrase or commentary on the part of the narrator, to dispel any doubt that the senseless jealousy and bickering displayed is a personal failing of these two souls. The verbal depth with which Gogol imbues them only makes them closer to type. The third-person narrator's contributions to this character judgment are limited to his assertions that the scene is not too grotesque or banal to realistically reflect Russian society. To deny the improbability of such viciously trivial disagreements, he writes: “Let this not appear strange to the reader…. . . there really are many things in this world that have this particularity” (183). Of their incredible gullibility towards rumors, he says: "There is nothing unusual in the fact that the two ladies finally became totally convinced of what they had hitherto simply assumed and known to be a mere hypothesis. Our brotherhood – we intelligent people, as we call ourselves – acts almost in the same way” (185). This latter statement corresponds to a novel-wide rhetorical strategy of assuming the reader's disbelief and countering it with an example from a scene that is ostensibly drawn from the reader's own experience, or at least from a certain form of common knowledge. The same tactic is used in chapter ten to explain how the population could believe that Chichikov could be Napoleon Bonaparte: “Perhaps there are readers who will call all this improbable…. . . However, it must be remembered that all this happened shortly after the glorious expulsion of the French. At that time, all our landowners, officials. . . all our literate people, as well as the illiterate ones, had become – at least for eight years – inveterate politicians” (205). Once again, the narrator sees himself and the reader (along with "we" and "our") as members of a massive third party who can judge the townspeople's foibles as absurd and credible. There are two other striking examples of characters whose action increases with a change in narrative voice, only to then reveal their strange flaws. It is the gossip mongers, Nozdrev and the postmaster, who have the ability to tell their own stories in the narrator's text. Nozdrev repeatedly tells stories throughout the novel, culminating in his own version of the rumored Chichikov story. In this section, the narrative voice is not entirely given to Nozdrev, but it conforms to his verbal style. It is said that "Nozdrev was definitely a man for whom there was absolutely no doubt", and what follows is a list of direct answers, delivered without equivocation or authorial comment. Each answer corresponds to the textual formula “To the question: [the townspeople's rumor about Chichikov]. Nozdrev's response:[Yes or no, a story follows]” (207). As with the ladies, the author gives Nozdrev greater freedom of action by putting his words before his own. Nozdrev's independence from the narrator is perhaps not as complete because his dialogue is paraphrased rather than quoted and is in a repetitive, and therefore more artificial, style. Nevertheless, this change in textual form stands out enough to identify Nozdrev as an alternative voice to the narrator. As chapters four and eight show, one of Nozdrev's main character traits is his ability to construct alternative narratives to those presented by his peers (66, 168). This gives him a bit more depth than the archetypal landowners, whose quirks are revealed through the unverbalized observations of Chichikov and the narrator. Yet for all his mastery of storytelling, Nozdrev cannot begin to say a word of substance or honesty: "Nozbrev, after a moment's hesitation, launched into a series of stupidities so blue that they resembled neither the truth nor anything else on earth” (208). Because his mind is still used to lie, Nozdrev remains a tragi-comic example of Russian vice, albeit more fleshed out than the other caricatures. Nozdrev's action is real enough to prevent the narrator from subsuming his voice into his, but his abuse of such freedom makes him an easier target for ridicule in extra-narrative commentary. The Postmaster represents the most completely independent extra-narrative voice, as his anecdote includes an entirely distinct narrative voice, not just a shift in narrative style to the third person. His conjecture about Chichikov's story takes the form of a lengthy interpolation in chapter ten, "The Story of Captain Kopeikin" (197-204). This segment is a complete skaz story of a vengeful veteran, offered to the gathered townsfolk as a solution to Chichikov's mysterious identity. The plot is less revealing of the postmaster's agency than of the language in which it is relayed. The postmaster is introduced in chapter ten as someone who peppers his speech "with a multiplicity of various tags and bizarre phrases, such as 'my dear sir,' 'a sort of man,' 'you know.' , 'you understand', 'you can just imagine', 'relatively speaking, so to speak', 'in a certain way', and other small verbal changes' (153). In the narration of Kopeikine's tale, these exact verbal tics indeed appear in almost every sentence, and the extra-diegetic narrator comments on this practice: "After the campaign of 1812, my dear sir – (thus began the postmaster, despite the fact that the room contained not one gentleman but six gentlemen)” (197). This comic assumption of a plural audience and a profusion of addresses to such a readership is shared with the author's narrator style, thus positioning both voices as equally authoritative in this chapter. Additionally, the protagonist frequently refers to his protagonist as "my Kopeikin," echoing the author's expressions "our hero" and "our friend Chichikov" (199, 222). Even more than Nozdrev, the postmaster demonstrates his agency by taking ownership of the narrative. Of course, the incredibly short-sighted conclusions the postmaster reaches in his digression make his agency at its most ridiculous. When it is pointed out that Kopeikin cannot be the same man as Chichikov because he is missing an arm, the postmaster first admits his mistake, but then attempts to fantastically rationalize his absurd conclusion (204) . The novel's most comprehensive diegetic voice completely fails to speak in a logically sound way. This suggests that.